#hero

What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight? ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#darkness #despair #fall #heroes #hope

There's no shame in fear. But understand this - the coward is ruled by fear, while the hero rides it like a wild stallion. ↗

— David Gemmell

#courage #fear #heroism #courage

Being a hero, the man had observed, is largely a matter of knowing one’s cues. ↗

— Lev Grossman

#heroes #courage

To die, so young to die. No, no, not I, I love the warm sunny skies, light, song, shining eyes, I want no war, no battle cry, No, no, not I. ↗

— Hannah Senesh

#defiance #determination #hope #hope-and-despair #inspiration

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver 5 minutes longer. ↗

— Ronald Reagan

#heroes #bravery

The Coward will run away from danger, only to strike in the dark. The Heroine will run through the dark, even though she knows the coward is waiting to strike. ↗

— David A. Cleinman

#heroic #heroine #inspirational #principle-destiny #courage

The moral, I suppose, would be that the first requirements for a heroic career are the knightly virtues of loyalty, temperance, and courage. The loyalty in this case is of two degrees or commitments: first, to the chosen adventure, but then, also, to the ideals of the order of knighthood. Now, this second commitment seems to put Gawain's way in opposition to the way of the Buddha, who when ordered by the Lord of Duty to perform the social duties proper to his caste, simply ignored the command, and that night achieved illumination as well as release from rebirth. Gawain is a European and, like Odysseus, who remained true to the earth and returned from the Island of the Sun to his marriage with Penelope, he has accepted, as the commitment of his life, not release from but loyalty to the values of life in this world. And yet, as we have just seen, whether following the middle way of the Buddha or the middle way of Gawain, the passage to fulfillment lies between the perils of desire and fear. ↗

— Joseph Campbell

#courage #desire #fear #gawain #hero

A friend once asked me why it was that stories about animals and their heroism...are so compelling. ...we love them because they're the closest thing we have to material evidence of an objective moral order--or, to put it another way, they're the closest thing we have to proof of the existence of God. They seem to prove that the things that matter to and move us the most--things like love, courage, loyalty, altruism--aren't just ideas we made up from nothing. To see them demonstrated in other animals proves they're real things, that they exist in the world independently of what humans invent and tell each other in the form of myth or fable. ↗

— Gwen Cooper

#courage

Such a lot is won when even a single man gets to his feet and says No ↗

— Bertolt Brecht

#courage #hero #independence #inspirational #courage

By the Angel, Bridget’s depressing,” said Henry, setting down his newspaper directly on his plate and causing the edge to soak through with egg yolk. Charlotte opened her mouth as if to object, and closed it again. “It’s all heartbreak, death and unrequited love.” “Well, that is what most songs are about,” said Will. “Requited love is nice, but it doesn’t make much of a ballad. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#will-herondale #death